REMEMBER THE EFFECTS OF SIN. 1Corinthians 5 “OH NO!” 1 Corinthians 5:2. “And ye are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he that hath done this deed might be taken away from among you.”
The whispers – began but the evidence was there. The report – the unthinkable has happened! Common knowledge – it is true – “So what?” Pride lifts its ugly head – what’s wrong with that? No tears – everybody does it, so don’t sweat it! He’s one of us – don’t condemn, you might do it too. Glorying – in urbanity; in being suave and modern – “it’s sin!”
Stop! No further! – it’s wrong to God; I know! Act fast and clear – Call a meeting in the name of the Lord. The power of the Lord Jesus Christ – this is not a small thing. The name of the Lord Jesus Christ – the greatest authority of all is behind you! Deliver him to Satan – that’s where he seems to want to be. The flesh must die – leave him there until he sees himself. A little leaven – sin may seem small but it gets big. Whole lump – it has spread all over; too far. Purge out – dig as deep as necessary till the lump is clean.
Christ our Passover – the house must be clean for the Passover. Keep the feast – don’t wait till later – Sunday’s coming! Unleavened bread – you can’t fake sincerity; truth has tones to it. Don’t judge the world – there’s no place there to quit. They are them; we are His – deal with your brother, love him. Don’t eat with him – brothers love brothers and love can hurt bad. Judge right – face facts; deal with sin; put away; pray hard. Wicked person – this is serious to God; it is serious to you.
Society as a whole has become used to immorality and various kinds of sexual sins, accepting them as normal behavior in people. What we are experiencing today in our post-Christian world was quite common and, in some places like Corinth, accepted as socially okay. When a society has no inner moral compass or no written standard of conduct such as the Bible to control behavior, almost any social or physical interaction is tolerated. However, when one believes in the Lord Jesus Christ and accepts the sacrifice He made on the cross as payment for our sins, this places us in a place of much higher moral responsibility. The consequences of sin cannot be overlooked.
Christian liberty does not make us free to do whatever we want. We are free to serve our Lord in ways that please Him and we have been given the power to do that by the indwelling Spirit of God. Our human flesh is an enemy of righteousness and is capable of unspeakable wickedness. Our new spiritual life since we were made alive in Christ and our soul that has been saved by God’s marvelous grace, has been sanctified to God. The problem we have is our “flesh” wars against our spirit and the spirit against the flesh. Our new nature wants to please God but our flesh deceives us and entices us to do those things that are sinful.
A "new creation" in Christ is one who has the Holy Spirit within. But the Spirit can be grieved or quenched by our actions or inactions. A professing Christian when made aware of sin by the truth of the Word of God and the Holy Spirit, will have a sense of guilt when sin occurs. Guilt is the response of the conscience acting on our behalf to make a change in our behavior. When the conscience is not heeded, and when guilt does not change our behavior, then outside influences have to be used.
Any person in a church fellowship has an effect on the local assembly for good or bad. The testimony of a church is affected by the daily lives of those in that fellowship as well as in their participation in the church's activities. We are members of Christ it is true, and we are also members of one another. Christian fellowship when it is God-honoring and consistently follows the teaching of the scriptures is a wonderful thing. Spiritual strength and joy are able to be shared and increase when the conduct of the lives of God's people is consistent with what we teach. When public and flagrant sin takes place among those who gather in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and is not corrected and dealt with in a scriptural manner, the whole church is paralyzed.
The Corinthian assembly seemed to have a distorted understanding of grace or else they were deliberately distorting grace to accommodate what they considered to be Christian liberty – liberty to do what they wanted. Sexual immorality had gone so far in one man that it surpassed even the perversions of paganism. Yet, the Christian believers tolerated it and seemed to think it was permissible because of God’s grace.
It is an action of grace to allow a person who commits such sin to even be allowed to live. It is an act of grace to have a specific way to deal with the person who has sinned and warn the whole assembly at the same time. It is an act of grace to point out that true repentance and forsaking of sin can bring recovery. It is an act of grace that the Lord has given a stated way to conduct discipline in order to change sinful behavior into restoration in a confined meeting of assembly believers.
There are clearly defined ways to deal with sin by changing the behavior of the sinning one through discipline. The whole point of discipline is to correct and, if necessary, punish one whose conduct in life has to be changed. In this chapter, the behavior that had to be changed was the immoral sin of incest. Standards of morality are unchangeable in the scriptures. The legislative practices of a government do not change the fundamental standards of morality taught by the Spirit of God.
When such sin takes place in a local assembly of God's people, we are not to overlook it, but rather mourn as we would one who has died. Strangely the Corinthian believers did not look at the sin of a man having his father's wife as a serious problem. Even unbelievers look at that act with disdain and abhorrence. Those in the fellowship of the Corinthian assembly may have thought the open-minded approach and the grace of God would make this acceptable. That is an example of "the wisdom of the world" in contrast to "the wisdom of God." The woman involved is not mentioned in this incident indicating she was probably not a child of God and was not connected to the assembly.
We are not called upon to deal with those who are non-Christians or are not a part of the assembly gathered to the Lord's name. While we do mourn over one who has fallen into sin, we cannot leave it at that. Sin has to be judged in order that wrong behavior will be corrected and others will be warned. We do not have the right to pass judgment on another person's work for the Lord and his motives. We do have the responsibility to correct bad conduct. Being put away from an assembly in which we find much joy in fellowship with God’s people, causes anguish of heart and soul in all the believers in a local church.
Those who are not genuine believers or are carnal in their outlook on life, generally don’t want to return to the fellowship of God’s people and the privileges of assembly life. They feel humiliated and do not want to face the Lord’s people again even though the Christians are forgiving and welcoming when recovery is real. Some will stay away for a long time in an effort to justify their sinful action and wait for people to come to them rather than go in repentance and humility to those who love them enough to carry out godly discipline.
Paul plainly told the Corinthian believers what to do about this man to bring about the change of life and understanding he needed. Paul had already judged the matter as it was open and needed no investigation into the affair. The assembly of those who were in that fellowship was to have a special meeting. Under the authority of the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, that sinning person was to be "taken away," "delivered unto Stan," "purged out," and "put away." The man himself had to take responsibility for, and the consequences of, his actions. The welfare of that man and all in the local church was to be preserved by this action. This is not something to be taken carelessly or lightly but is to change undisciplined behavior condemned by the standard of righteousness, to honorable and righteous living once again.
The discipline imposed is to change behavior. When that change is evident and real, the “leaven” is removed and a “new batch of unleavened bread” makes it possible to keep the feast in sincerity and truth. The problem with sin in one person in an assembly is that it affects everyone. Recovery affects everyone also because sin has been dealt with, warnings to everyone have been given, and fellowship and unity have been restored.
The sphere in which an assembly had God-given authority to deal with sin is confined to the local assembly. It is not the right of a scripturally gathered assembly of Christians to pass judgment on other groups or individuals who are not in the fellowship of a local church. God alone has the understanding, ability, and authority to pass judgment on those outside of the local church.
The influence of discipline of one person in a family affects everyone in that family. The same is true in an assembly. This is not an act of vengeance but of the correction of behavior. The expected result is repentance and restoration. The practice of church discipline is a motivating factor to the proper conduct of Christian living, on the part of everyone in the assembly. We are still to pray for and encourage an erring person to repent and change so they may again come into the moral safety of church fellowship. By distancing ourselves from the sinning person there is a purging process that goes on in the isolation from the church that stops the "leaven of malice and wickedness" from working among all of God's people.
When one has been "delivered unto Satan," that person is not outside the faith, but outside the security and safety of the Holy Spirit working through the gifts in the church. Separation does not mean abandonment but avoiding the contamination that public, immoral activity brings. To avoid facing sin or rationalizing sin, we can harm other people and misrepresent Christ to the world around us.
The objective of proper, biblical discipline is to convict, and correct a sinning believer and restore that person to the Lord and His people. It also serves as a warning to others not to engage in similar activity that leads to sin. Discipline in one's life is not necessarily easy nor do people like it. Self-discipline can keep one from the discipline imposed on us by others or the church. Varying kinds of church discipline increase in consequence in keeping with the serious effects of that behavior.